Wine
by Don'tEvenHaveAGun
Summary: Deciphering between worlds is as simple as flipping a card. You choose. I'll raise you what you're worth. Either way, you and I could both lose our heads. Here. You don't have to take the pill with that swig of wine anymore.


**Wine **

_**Summary**_**:**

"_Deciphering between worlds is as simple as flipping a card. You choose. I'll raise you what you're worth. Either way, you and I could both lose our heads. Here. You don't have to take the pill with that swig of wine anymore."_

_**Influence for writing this shot:**_

I needed a break from writing other things – so I chose this little dabble. The story, itself, does not have to make sense – nor will I tell my meaning behind this piece. (I wanted the reader to decide if Alice has been living in Wonderland or reality the entire time).

I guess, I would consider this Alternate Universe: Alice begins to have dreams about Wonderland; she becomes familiar with the residence that live in her dreams – but, Joker is such a crude man. He begins to question Alice if her reality is the dreams and Wonderland is her reality. Either way, Alice is not all there.

_**Genre**_:

Horror. Hurt/Comfort. Mystery. Romance (If you squint real hard).

**1.**

"**Where the dreams begin, and reality blurs."**

There's a bitter taste in her mouth; a lingering of the remnants of tonic, hinted with a splash of fruit. Alice, clearly, had no idea why this sensation eroded her away. She ignores this bitter note on her tongue, and continues to discuss pleasantries of the abnormal with the harlequin on the adjacent end of a dealing table.

Alice notes the color of red, piqued by the subtle tone of crimson that flashes before her ocean-complex eyes; the daft girl is wry, and she expresses so with a mockingbird smile. Polite. Punctual. She waits for Joker to deal her a hand with a card faced up and another faced down.

"All is well, I hope?" Joker inquires, his single wine-stained eye studying her features; clashing between colors of taint and sea. Her hand hesitates over her cards, dexterous fingers curving over the stiff texture, but not quite yet revealing her outcome. Her expression is stoic, eyes lulling and contemplating over her moves; she always made sure to doubt her own words before she responded to the man – lest she meant to find her own tale of folly.

"To an extent. Of course, I'll manage. Ha! Twenty-one." Alice leans back into her wooden chair, giving the furniture a light creak with a shift in weight. She smiles, and her expression is powerful but quickly fleeting.

"Wonderland is always full of change," Joker ignores Alice's advantage, settling for small talk; his hollow-point smile causes the foreigner to falter. "It's always better to forget certain things. Memories are pretty, Alice, but irrelevant." He talks in foreign riddles, keeping that damning smile painted so sweetly against the porcelain of his lips. _He's a malicious liar, after all._

"Pardon?" Alice's lips thin at that; she beckoned for explanation, and he merely smiles.

His silence answers her.

**2.**

"**The morals of fatherhood."**

Her father tells her that Wonderland is merely a dream, a figment, and that she needed to gather her mind before she sought to speak. There was no need in embarrassing her father who was held rather high in his congregation, a respected dean – only to be dishonored by a daughter that spun tales of singing flowers, a game of cards, and gardens that take her to the looking-glass. _Simply rubbish. A fool's notion, no less._

Alice's father tells her that her mind wanders off too much for a proper woman; he worries about her constantly as her age wanes from curious teenager to delusional adult; she mumbles like a vagrant over the simple things in life. She has never known hardship. Not in the material sense – possibly her state-of-mind lacked clarification.

Truly, he loved his darling daughter. And, perhaps, she suffered from brain fevers that called to her at night in whispered lullabies. But her withdraw from society is disturbing, and he finds her staring off into void more so than often. Her crystal eyes are fixated, kaleidoscope eyes always fading off to different swatches of colors that catches her fancy.

He tells her to take her pills that the doctor from Oxford prescribed her, giving her a sip of wine to wash it all down just before bed would always calm her down.

**3.**

"**The forest that devours all."**

In the august of her righteousness, she waits for her fall; she watches the indigo sky blush into a silent night. Time was a somber concept, and so was the idea of coming across as lost.

Alice felt hypocritical, a walking contradiction, in always belittling Ace for his directionally challenged mind. In reality, it was Alice who had problems with following directions. Her eyes fell upon a sea of oak, charmed by subtle nature – but haunted by the colorful signs that were hammered down high above bark.

She's hesitant. For good reason, of course. She cringes when that familiar taste settles in the back of her throat again. A horrid taste; a lingering of bitter fruit and something bland and chalky. Still, she checks her surroundings, concluding she was absolutely lost. No. She verified it within her state-of-mind – or whatever that was left of it. But she reads, and continues to read over signs that only wished to daunt her high above the oak trees.

"Up. Down. Left. Right. Alice, what do you think?" Alice is quick to jerk her head up at the man that approached her, watching the way a taunting smile curves upon those lips that asked her simple questions that she had no proper answer to. This was Wonderland, after all. She shouldn't be so naïve to think that things such as _friendly_ encounters in the middle of the woods was abnormal. It could have been a bloody blessing in disguise – even if that guise meant the introduction of Joker.

"I do not know," said Alice, rather tired of always falling in-between dreams she had no business in; her father had told her that everything was a dream. That Alice was never allowed to discuss such – ridicules tall tales to others. She's had dreams of this place plenty. "Would you know how to leave this place? I do believe, I've always woke up before I catch a lead."

"Are you not awake," the harlequin asked; Alice has never known this particular man in her dreams to tell the truth. He only showed interest. Interest in what she believed to be real of not. Interest in horrifying her to no end; she found no solace with this man adored in reds and blacks and gold. "You look pretty alert to me now."

"Matter of perspective," Alice waves him off, "It may seem that my subconscious would believe that, having you tell me the obvious within my dreams, deceiving me to believe that Wonderland is normal. I need to wake up, I always do."

"Normal? Wonderland is not normal? All curious things in this world can't be dubbed normal – that is why people label it as strange; they have no idea on how to approach different. But, please, Alice, humor me. Tell me your definition of normal." He's twisting her analogies again, and he smugly does so by refusing to wipe that horrid smile off his lips.

"Nothing is normal in Wonderland," said Alice bluntly, averting her attention in bitter annoyance between the clown and the forest that protruded high into dark, engulfing heavens; the clouds churned; the illuminating moon is low and bright and wide.

"Like you've said, Alice," mocked Joker, "Matter of perspective. What you and I see are two different things. I can also label you as the strange one – or perhaps, I'm dreaming and you're the illusion?" He laughs, and the tone is jubilant, masking his bitter undertones.

"That's stupid. No. _Illogical. _You're not real, and I'll stop having these childish dreams one day. Just you watch."

"Well, that's rude, indeed." The jester hummed, watching the foreigner turn from his graces and disappear into woods.

**4.**

"**Hell only serves a fraction compared to the horrors of dreams."**

"I keep having dreams, doctor. I feel that my mind is in shambles – that I'm truly mad." Alice's voice is shaky, trying to concentrate with the constant, ominous ticks of a grandfather clock; the sound is marching, repetitive, and she clearly despises the notion of time and all the simplicities that come with it.

"Hush, girl. Dreams are successions of images and emotions that occur involuntarily in the mind while your body is at rest. They cannot, and will not, hurt you. Dreams can vary, however. Now, Alice, can you give me anything in your personal life that may relate to these dreams? Dreams do determine on everyday occurrences, I believe. And your mind is merely making up a whole different world to put your body at rest." Alice's doctor was a stern man, not mean, just demanding; he impatiently taps at his clipboard with his ballpoint pen, noting her blank stare, writing down concerns that scribbled lightly against board and paper.

"Perhaps, I'm worried. I don't know, doctor. Sometimes I miss my mother – could these dreams have anything to do with her absence? I was a young girl, after all. I wouldn't fathom the possibility."

"You'd be surprised, dear girl. Please, how did the late Misses Liddell go?" Ash eyes peer over rounded specs; his glasses slid low down the bridge of his nose. His imposing, wise-stricken eyes analyzing every nervous twitch of Alice's fingers while she twiddled with her dress.

"Scarlet fever, sir. I believe. I was ten when my mother passed. Terrible, really. Her body broke out in hives, and my father was so panicked that my sister and I could catch it – that he banned us from entering our mother's room. She died on her deathbed alone – mostly. Well, my eldest sister also succumbed the same fate."

"Could it be that you have this vague hatred for your father by not letting you stay at your mother's side, maybe your sister's? He did, in fact, take away your final moments with them."

"Hate can be a strong word," said Alice, rather drolly for the occasion. Her doctor's eyes narrowed at that.

"Hate is a human emotion. I am a therapist. A doctor of the mind. I understand the concept of emotional hate. As humans, we will hate whoever we want for the pettiest of reasons. Wars could have been avoided altogether within our past if we did not feel this gnawing emotion. Now, I'll ask again. Do you hate your father?"

A pregnant pause, and it gives Alice enough time to size herself up to her doctor.

"Hate? Now, how funny to think about it that way. You could say I hate a lot of things, and how things have panned out for me. I just hate whatever you people give me as my medication. I feel poisoned -,"

"- Don't be daft. We are not poisoning you. We are helping you. That's the paranoia talking."

Silence. Alice has said enough. The only sound she is plagued with is the scratching of her doctor's pen, documenting their conversation.

**5.**

"**We lie awake at night, listening to the constant tapping against the pane of glass."**

The sound is light and meek, too frail to be considered real noise. Alice likes to believe that it is her house settling in - that it was simply her mind playing games with her again, subconsciously telling her that it is time to rest. But she knew better than to believe that.

She stares up at her cathedral ceiling, watching the void of dark consume her room. Nighttime was simply too much on the girl's soul; it is where her dreams would take root, making it harder and harder for her to tell apart reality from dream. So, she stays in bed, hoping that one of these possibilities would end – or, possibly, both. If she was lucky, of course.

The sound starts out as white noise, the tapping of a knuckle to glass; the sound becomes scarce and is almost forgotten within the confines of Alice's space. The tap would come back every thirty minutes, giving her enough time to find an air of solace to drift into light sleep. But the sound would come again, dissolving the complete need for slumber.

Hours play on, minutes spinning into years, centuries. The taps are endless, and becomes more aggressive, defined, with trying to catch Alice's attention. They try to serenade her off the side of her bed; a lullaby that found no use for sleep, nor the comforts for such trivial matters. There's an ethic to this constant repetition; a drumming sense of pale-bone knuckle striking the glass.

Alice's had enough with her mind reeling, her ocean eyes prying through sheets of darkness that enwraps her room. Hours may have passed, but the sun has refused to show its face; the moon refuses to die every night to let the reincarnation of a bigger star to take its place high above the heavens.

The melody of a droning tap haunts her, and it kills her slowly when she begins to fumble towards her nightstand; her fingers brush over the base of her kerosene lamp, striking a match to give light to her dark room. There's a flare, and the fire dances idly upon its wick; the practice is bewitching. She tosses aside mounds of cream bedding, feet brushing over the cool texture of hardwood floors.

Slowly, the girl walks to her mirror, holding up her lamp to the reflected image in her mirror. She sees red, and the color only ignites her desire to yell at the face that grinned so pleasantly in her presences.

"I am dreaming," Alice's tone is sharp, her tongue clicks at that; she tightens her grip around her lamp, the oil behind the glass slowly drifting to one side to the next.

A red eye narrows, the maddening smile permanent. "I was beginning to wonder when you'd get up from your bed. It is rude, you know, to not answer a guest." A hand pushes out from the glass, and like water, he easily passes from the glass. The looking-glass was a mocking shame; while the pane of glass showed one emotion – it'd simply show the opposite.

Alice drawls back, bare feet pressed firm to the floors to keep her balance. She holds her lamp up, watching the eerie shadows cast against the performer's face. A hollow-point smile. A dreaded grin that was completely venomous. Though, held property to something whimsical. Alice hated liars. She hated people who betrayed their gentle outlook to fool others; he was manipulating her, falsely showing her kindness.

There's that taste again; the ravenous, vile taste of something coming up her throat. The fruit is bitter, and she does everything she can to keep herself from dry heaving. Out of human reflex, and a God-given instinct, her hand lashes up and her palm covers her lips. Alice would gasp, her waist causing her body to bend downward to catch herself; with wide eyes, she inclines her head up to at the man that sought refuge in her insanities.

The taste is pungent, and she hates the man that slowly extends his hand out towards her to touch her; his movement is languid, and she steps back with her lamp held away.

Alice wants to ignore him, ignore this delusion that's plagued her mind. _She wished that this red eyed bastard would diminish, combust, to fade away from her broken mind that he decimated and left as a horrid wasteland. _

"Don't you bloody touch me, fool. I've had about enough of you. You've ruined me, you've slandered my name. I have no patience for you. You're the reason while I'm sick and why I always taste my own bile. They make me take things to settle my dreams – to ignore you and everyone else that crawls out of Wonderland."

Joker's spiderlike fingers curl back, his grin curving into something more dangerous than his usual haunting demeanor. His single, wine-stained eye widens at that and he looks absolutely deranged, repulsed by her blame. Slowly, he recoils his own hand to his side and begins to calculate her, analyzing and observing her stilled figure that stared up at him with such disdain.

"And so they fill you with medications and ship you off as normal," inquired Joker with a mocking chuckle; a laugh that could have been considered soothing or diabolical. "Have you ever thought that it may not be you that is mad, but society itself? Or, maybe, you'll actually listen to me this time when I say that I am not a figment of your twisted imagination, but is no realer than _you_."

Alice is enraged. She wants the voices to stop. She wants the harlequin to bite his tongue; he's said far too little, but it was clearly too much for her to bear.

She tosses the oil lamp, aiming towards the floor to separate her from Joker. Glass shattered, oil spills, and the light that danced so sweetly on its white wick would combust. There's a bloom of fire that erupts, swallowing Alice's anger as she stared at the man so plainly – so inhuman. She can smell kerosene, and the birth of ash that flickered with distant embers and brushed against wood flooring.

Slowly, he catches his chance to talk to her, "Alice, deciphering between worlds is as simple as flipping a card. You choose. I'll raise you what you're worth. Either way, you and I could both lose our heads. Here. In Wonderland. You don't have to take the pill with that swig of wine anymore. Your mind is poisoned." He ignores the fire that she created in reality and in mind, watching her eyes of blue flood with hatred and sadistic intent; she's lost her humanist nature long ago.

She screams at him from the other end of the fire, "_Shut up!_ _Go away!" _Her adrenaline chokes her, took her to the highest peak, and abandoned her just as fast. "I want to sleep! I haven't slept in so long! You've haunted me long enough!" The ash that she breathed in stung the back of her throat; her voice raw from power from what she breathed in. She has not been allowed to voice her problems in so long – that even talking gives her a bitter taste.

Alice throws her hands up, clenching the sides of her skull, digging and curling her fingertips into her sea of hair, covering her ears to ignore his whimsical voice that told her vulgar lies. Her vision is obscured by her mass of tresses. Her eyes burned from the heat that radiated from the fire that was so close; she closes her eyes, hunching forward while nausea tempted her. She's too distraught to realize that this has been the first time in years since she's shed tears. She grieved. She never thought the notion of crying anymore was truly plausible for her. She believed her ability to show remorse evaporated when her mother and sister died; she's cried enough. She never wanted to relive the vivid emotion again.

There was a time, long ago, where Alice was a normal girl. Far too naïve to believe that her sanities could rob her virginal outlook and distort her life. Her dreams were so sweet at first.

**6.**

"**Blood is harder to wash out than wine."**

There was blood. A whole lot of blood, Mister Liddell noted. The russet color stained up his daughter's legs, and left a stale coloring at the hem of her white nightgown. It was the outcome of her shattering her lamp, and having the broken fragments scatter.

His daughter kept muttering about a fire. But there was no fire. Only darkness and yelling that came from it. He tries to settle her, tries to sway her to settle and abandon her anxiety. Slowly, he went over the reasons why his daughter decided to break her kerosene lamp – and why did she scream out '_leave me alone'._

His own hands shake, lathered in his daughter's stale crimson. He's sickened by the smell of iron; it burned his sense and left him daft for only a moment.

Looking down at his daughter, the man bit back a bitter sob; he simply knew he lost his daughter to her own mind. Her eyes were too vacant, and reminded him nothing of his wife.

The good Mister Liddell was truly alone.

**7. **

"**I'm sorry, I lost my train of thought long ago."**

A blur of images settles the traveler, and she becomes rather curious over the foreign locations that were merely lost to her moments ago, just outside her boxcar window; she doesn't know why she's traveling or where she's heading, but it was endearing. She was comfortable, at ease when she awoke from her faraway dream. The dream wasn't pleasant, but she certainly felt rested and safe while she sat upon her velvet seating.

Alice's fingers smooth out her blue dress, and she idly plays with a few fray strands from her white apron; enthralled by the landscaping of dotting destinations.

"Tickets?" A voice calls to her, and she jumps from the inquiry. She didn't even hear the man approach her.

Alice turns from her window and smiles up at the man dressed in black, smothered in reds and gold. A conductor's outfit pressed and free from any wrinkles. "Oh, Joker?"

"Tickets?" He repeats, leaning forward to invade her space; his smile is not as menacing, merely distant and curious. Alice could proudly say that his smile represented an interested child.

Alice pats her apron pockets, idly smiling; her fingers brush over paper and she pulls the ticket out, handing it to the man so he could punch a hole in it. "Did you sleep alright? I didn't want to wake you up yet."

"I've slept okay," Alice said, eyes trailing to other things that interested her. "Had a most peculiar dream, however."

"Oh?"

The girl laughs, waving off his concern. "I don't remember the dream. I only woke up believing it to be an odd one. Ever get those?"

There's a pause, and Joker's smile curls into some undefinable. "You could say that, yes. But, please, Alice, enjoy yourself on your trip. It will be a rather long one, indeed."

**A/N: Yep. I wanted it to not make sense, but wanted others to interrupt it. Alice's Wonderland could have been real and her realities were dreams - or vice versa. She could have truly lost her mind and sought refuge within her Wonderland dreams. Who knows? **

**I ended the one-shot while they're on the train (Like in Diamond). So, eh.**


End file.
